MetroPCS Communications (NYSE:PCS): In a letter to MetroPCS shareholders, P. Schoenfeld Asset Management, or PSAM, requested that they vote against the proposed MetroPCS and T-Mobile USA transaction. PSAM is strongly opposed to the proposed transaction due to the fact that under its current terms, the deal is unfair to MetroPCS shareholders and is described as irresponsible and inefficiently structured. Furthermore, the deal does not represent full and fair value for PSAM’s collective investment in the company, it added. Additionally, PSAM noted that it was heartened to see that other major shareholders, including Paulson & Co. Inc., the largest MetroPCS shareholder as it owns 36.3 million shares or 9.9 percent of outstanding shares as of the record date, also intend to vote against the deal.
AT&T (NYSE:T): It is possible that AT&T will sell its cellphone towers for “mid-$5 billion” or over, stated RBC Capital in a report that was released on Thursday. RBC Capital analyst Jonathan Atkin has stated that American Tower (NYSE:AMT) would be the most likely buyer if AT&T makes the move to sell its cellphone towers, which a number of wireless service providers have done. Last year, Crown Castle (NYSE:CCI) acquired 7,200 towers from T-Mobile USA for $2.4 billion. It is possible that AT&T will put about 14,500 cellphone towers up for sale, Atkin claims. ”We believe AT&T is actively considering the monetization of its tower assets in a similar fashion to several of its peers in the wireless industry,” wrote Atkin. “We calculate that these assets could fetch mid-$5 billion or more for AT&T’s 14,500 sites, based on recent tower-industry transactions and assuming roughly $400,000 per site.”
Vodafone (NASDAQ:VOD): Vodafone and France Telecom’s (NYSE:FTE) Orange are to invest as much as 1 billion euro to jointly build a fibre network in Spain, bringing high-speed Internet service to six million households spanning 50 major cities by September 2017. The two operators stated that although the fibre networks will be owned independently, the companies are to share the same technical specifications as a means to ensure compatibility as a single network, and each partner is to be given guaranteed access to the whole infrastructure. The joint deployment intends to compete with Telefónica’s (NYSE:TEF) existing fibre network, presently reaching 2.2 million homes, and it hopes to connect 800,000 households and workplaces by March 2014, increasing to three million by September 2015. “The fibre optic market in Spain is very deficient in terms of competition and could end up … a monopolised market if this is not corrected,” Orange Spain CEO Jean-Marc Vignolles told Reuters.
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